Automatic Entry Gating

[Pilcrow]

Summary: I've noticed a few rounds where the marines have been vastly bolstered by floods of new players joining up, despite the aliens having stuck their shit right into the sulaco and overwhelmed all but cryo. I've also noticed that I've been facehugged immediately on joining a round fresh.
This shouldn't really happen, and there might be a few ways to correct this.

Benefits: Reduces admin overhead, makes boarding actions a more certain victory in some circumstances.

Details: To put it simply, after the queen has first touched the shuttle console, we look for aliens on the shuttle whenever it arrives at a location - if there are, we flip a var so that we don't check anymore, and turn off newspawns.

Implementation: Should be pretty simple, would require maybe a couple of vars added and a simple check that you can hook into the already existing shuttle code (which automatically generates a list of contents as part of moving, anyway, and the code i'm looking at does a for() list to dunk mobs on the floor and shake their camera)
Processing overhead should be minor at worst, and chances are you'll only be making this check once a round.

Alternatively, you could be a lot messier and periodically check that there aren't any ayys, eggs, or weed nodes in the cryo room, or do this check when a player attempts to join.
That is pretty messy, though.

[MadSnailDisease]

[quote=Pilcrow]
Alternatively, you could be a lot messier and periodically check that there aren't any ayys, eggs, or weed nodes in the cryo room, or do this check when a player attempts to join.
That is pretty messy, though.
[/quote]
For that, you could just do
for /obj/item/whatever_the_object_path_is in cryo
<do something about it>

Call that when someone spawns and it won't waste any processing time because if there are none there, it's not a problem

[ErikHanson]

what.png

That is just plain wrong, and it'll also perform like shit-tier, loops without typechecks are usually faster, e.g.

Code: Select all

for(var/gas in trace_gases)
    var/datum/gas/trace_gas = gas   

will be faster than

Code: Select all

for(var/datum/gas/trace_gas in trace_gases)

Looping trough all items in a area to check if someone would be able to join or not is also pretty cringy, i'd suggest just disabling all latejoins as soon as xenos board the sulaco.

[MadSnailDisease]

Sorry, I did a shitty job of explaining. Typing pseudocode on an iPad is not stellar either

Nvm, I can't show you an explanation without my desktop. Ignore me and I give +1.

[forwardslashN]

+1
Yeah, sounds good. So long as the queen actually boards the ship, since I've seen marines recalling the shuttle with like two xenos on it while the majority of the xeno force continues to hide on planet/prison.

[RoswellRay]

-1 Rounds can often drag for hours after the queen has boarded all the aliens have to do is slash the cryo APC as is,one of the typically least defended areas on the upper deck sulaco.

[Pilcrow]

-1 Rounds can often drag for hours after the queen has boarded all the aliens have to do is slash the cryo APC as is,one of the typically least defended areas on the upper deck sulaco.

Did you consider actually reading the post?
Part of the reasons rounds 'drag on for hours' is because newspawn limiting is currently admin-only, automating this in at least some form means that marines can't get arbitrary backup after the station is already pretty much FUBAR, which I know for a fact has extended rounds way longer than they should be.
A good cutoff point for this is usually the shuttle being hijacked and the aliens first arriving, which is where shit hits the fan and where both sides are fighting to eradicate eachother entirely. I'd suggest limiting chestburts too but that's far less of an issue because, amongst other things, it requires more effort than a new player merely joining the game.

Remember, either side has to be destroyed to the last man - and if the last man's a new guy who's just appeared and climbed into maint, that's going to take a while.

[RoswellRay]

Did you consider actually reading the post?
Part of the reasons rounds 'drag on for hours' is because newspawn limiting is currently admin-only, automating this in at least some form means that marines can't get arbitrary backup after the station is already pretty much FUBAR, which I know for a fact has extended rounds way longer than they should be.
A good cutoff point for this is usually the shuttle being hijacked and the aliens first arriving, which is where shit hits the fan and where both sides are fighting to eradicate eachother entirely. I'd suggest limiting chestburts too but that's far less of an issue because, amongst other things, it requires more effort than a new player merely joining the game.

Remember, either side has to be destroyed to the last man - and if the last man's a new guy who's just appeared and climbed into maint, that's going to take a while.

Eh,did they remove APC slashing? I definately not long back joined as an observer because it said new players were no longer able to enter only to have it turn out that it was because a loose runner slashed the apc,I was real salty when they repaired it and I realised I gave away my chance at entering.

[Pilcrow]

Eh,did they remove APC slashing? I definately not long back joined as an observer because it said new players were no longer able to enter only to have it turn out that it was because a loose runner slashed the apc,I was real salty when they repaired it and I realised I gave away my chance at entering.

APC slashing doesn't change whether you can spawn or not to my knowledge - I've spawned into a powerless cryobay a couple of times (usually getting facehugged instantly) and seen new players appear with or without power fairly late into the game.
Chances are the admins had activated the block on your round.

[MadSnailDisease]

APC slashing doesn't change whether you can spawn or not to my knowledge - I've spawned into a powerless cryobay a couple of times (usually getting facehugged instantly) and seen new players appear with or without power fairly late into the game.
Chances are the admins had activated the block on your round.

This raises a good point. Why not limit newspawns while the power is out in cryo? This makes RP sense and will most likely take place pretty soon after the aliens board, completing what you were suggesting in the first place.

[KingKire]

+1 bump. If the aliens decent control of cryo bay, i would think newspawns should be disabled. The suggestion of having a disabled APC turn off cryo would be a good way to go about it imo, now that ALL apcs can be slashed. The cryo bay APC can be fixed up as well by engineers, so it is not a permanent lock on newspawns.

[TheDonkified]

+1. Xenos camping cryo and infecting late joiners right when they join is a little infuriating. A mechanic to prevent that would be nice.

[kazere]

+1 Makes sense really and would prevent a round extending into where it should not be.

[Sarah_U.]

Isn't that already implemented though?

[MrJJJ]

Nope, doesn't seem like it.